“Real Energy” at Microsoft GEF
By Ali Ferling
One of our Microsoft slogans is “People. The real energy in oil & gas.” This year at our 7th annual Global Energy Forum (GEF) in Houston, customers, partners, and colleagues experienced that real energy first hand.
With a record turnout and an event culminating in a presentation from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the place and the people were buzzing---cautiously optimistic about growing confidence in the economy and genuinely enthusiastic about the possibilities of our industry and the types of cutting-edge solutions that Microsoft and our partners are making a reality.
In his address, Ballmer pointed out that he is not an oil and gas industry expert, but thinks of himself as an IT expert with “opinions” on the subject.
In his discussions with senior corporate leaders, Ballmer found that many were “completely unafraid to embrace new technologies.” These discussions were supported by results from a recently released study (by Microsoft and Accenture) that show 73 percent of the oil and gas professionals polled said that social media tools, such as blogging or Facebook, helped them complete projects on time and within budget—which was up 40 percent from a previous year’s study. (See an overview of the study results.)
The opportunity for both workers and businesses from improved collaboration through social media tools is huge. The study found that the biggest value was realized in connecting globally dispersed E&P workers and transferring knowledge to solve complex technical problems. Other study results include time saving, significant productivity gains, reduced travel, and increased work flexibility.
“The cloud is the future.”
Ballmer also thinks that oil and gas industry businesses will move to “cloud computing”—remote centers for storing and accessing data and applications using the Internet, which are designed to save businesses money, in part by reducing the need to build major onsite computing infrastructure.
The cloud approach is ideal for complex E&P operations, with its multi-vendor, multi-partner environment and huge volumes of data that require a combination of strict security and easy sharing with appropriate partners. The cloud facilitates secure, reliable access by the right partners to the right data.
Ballmer explained that businesses now have the power of choice ranging from traditional data centers, virtualized data centers to private and public clouds, which enable the type of expansive yet secure collaboration required in oil and gas.
In fact, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner iStore has now deployed PetroTrek Online, its Digital Oilfield suite of applications, on Microsoft Windows Azure Platform, an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted through Microsoft data centers. So it appears that the future is here.
What do you think? Is the future in the cloud? Post your thoughts here now.
For more information, visit www.microsoft.com/oilandgas.